Media planning is an important but complex activity for many companies. Media-planning includes such activities as determining, with respect to certain goods or services offered for sale, the media outlets that represent a best match for the target audience.
Traditionally, media planning has been performed with respect to such traditional media outlets as television, radio, magazines, and newspapers. In more recent decades, the task has become even more complex, with the widespread adoption of a plethora of Internet-based media outlets.
With traditional media, a significant limitation, for the media-planning process, has been the set of characteristics by which its audience can be analyzed. Thus, even if a target audience can be precisely defined, a media outlet may simply not have the data, by which its match to the target audience can be evaluated.
This limitation is due mainly to the fact that traditional media operates in only one direction—from the broadcaster (or media producer) to the audience. It is difficult for a traditional media outlet to create the conditions under which information can flow in the opposite direction—from the audience back to the broadcaster or media producer. The reasons for this difficulty include the following:                audience members are unwilling to expend the effort to provide such information;        the logistics of collecting this type of feedback is time-consuming and/or expensive.        
It would therefore be desirable to have media-planning tools that can increase the set of characteristics by which an audience of a media outlet can be analyzed, so that media buyers can better match their business goals against the wide range of media options. It would also be desirable to have media-planning tools that can increase the ability of media planners to define their target audiences.